Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia as a Description of Cluny, and the Controversy over Monastic Art

Abstract

The current conception of the art of the abbey of Cluny and of what is generally known as the Cluniac Order has been formed to an inordinate degree on the basis of one historical document, Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia ad Guillelmum. Indeed, many scholars have seen the treatise's passage on art (Apol 28-29) as a description of art as it existed at Cluny at the time of the writing of the Apologia (probably 1125). In confronting the question, this article briefly takes up a number of issues, including the belief that the Apologia was specifically addressed to the abbey of Cluny, that Bernard was either strongly repulsed by or strongly attracted to art, and that Apol 29 is a description of actual cloister sculpture, most notably that of the cloister of Pons at Cluny. Instead, the passage which has been seen as a description of the cloister of Pons is explained as a critique of certain elements of art as a spiritual distraction--the implication being that a reformulation of our artistic conception of Cluny is long overdue, and that the criticism of art contained in the Apologia played a larger role than that of merely acting as a censure of artworks as they existed at Cluny.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.